Wes Ball

Wes Ball (birthname: Wesley Martin Ball) is a director and producer of four-quadrant studio blockbusters, after working on features in several capacities, including as a pre-visualization artist, graphic artist, and visual effects artist on indie filmmaker Mike Mills’s comedy-drama, Beginners (2010), co-starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, and Melanie Laurent, and which was released by Focus Features after premiering at the Toronto film festival.

After making three short films as director-producer from 2002 to 2011, Ball launched his feature directing career with The Maze Runner (2014), 20^th Century Fox’s successful big-screen transfer of James Dashner’s novel starring Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, and Patricia Clarkson, and grossing ten times its $34 million budget with a global take of $348.3 million.

Ball was director and executive producer of the first Maze Runner sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015), reuniting the original cast with new cast members Giancarlo Esposito, Aiden Gillen, Ki Hong Lee, Barry Pepper, and Lili Taylor, grossing $312.4 million against $61 million costs. Ball held the twin billings of director-producer for the first time in features with the third and final entry in the Maze Runner series with Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018)—-again written by screenwriter T.S. Nowlin, adapting James Dashner’s novel—and featuring new cast member Walton Goggins alongside the returning cast, and earning a $288 million global take on a $62 budget.

Wes Ball was director-producer of the highly anticipated sequel, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the follow-up to the remarkable War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) and the fourth entry in 20^th Century Studios’ Planet of the Apes rebooted franchise, co-starring Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Pater Macon, and William H. Macy.

Ball was producer only (with, among other producers, Ridley Scott) on co-writer/director Justin Barber’s found-footage sci-fi horror movie, Phoenix Forgotten (2017), starring Chelsea Lopez and Florence Hartigan, and losing money for distributor/production company Cinelou Films with a poor $3.7 million return.